


persona non grata

by BellumGerere



Series: ruthless calculus [2]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, FebuWhump2021, Horizon (Mass Effect), Insomnia, Past Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard, Post-Horizon (Mass Effect), Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:14:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29253543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BellumGerere/pseuds/BellumGerere
Summary: noun: an unacceptable or unwelcome person.The Illusive Man warned her about Kaidan being on Horizon, but she doesn't anticipate just how much it will affect her.
Relationships: Thane Krios/Female Shepard
Series: ruthless calculus [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960111
Kudos: 7





	persona non grata

**Author's Note:**

> i've been thinking a lot about how half of the dossier missions are arbitrarily locked behind the horizon missions, and how things would be different if celia were just given all of them at the start and could go about them in whatever order she wanted. illium would definitely be one of the places she went first, after omega - not only for romance plot reasons (though to me having him there earlier makes sense for that too), but because there are two people there to recruit, so she'd see it as a more efficient use of her time. since the prerequisite for horizon is 'recruit four squadmates,' though (afaik), she hasn't actually recruited samara in this one...illusive man fucking up her plans once again
> 
> this is tagged as celia/thane because it's important enough to their relationship development to include it there, but it's decidedly pre-relationship since they've known each other less than two days. also just for the record i hate love triangles and that's Not what i'm going for here; i Do think that thane being around for this confrontation helps the timeline of his and celia's relationship make a bit more sense, because she's so closed-off emotionally that it would take something like this to start a more open dialogue between them. speaking of dialogue, there's some lifted from the horizon mission here; i don't know if that kind of thing bothers people or not, so this is your warning lol -bel

Shepard had told Thane in the CIC that she would give him a day or two to get settled, familiarize himself with the ship and its crew, before she took him with her on any mission of great import. As it turns out, he gets less than a day. The next morning, he is woken from a light sleep by a knock at the door, and when he calls for them to enter there she is, in pants and a tank top with her hair pulled back into a ponytail—even with it pulled up, it still falls almost to the middle of her back. “I just got a call,” she says, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. “A human colony on Horizon is being attacked. We’re en route right now, and I want you on the ground team.”

He doesn’t respond at first, just stands with his hands clasped behind his back and one eye ridge raised. They look at each other for a moment, sizing each other up in the same way they had on Illium. “Are you sure you want to bring someone new to the ship on what sounds like a crucial mission?”

“Yes.” She straightens up to mimic his posture, though her arms hang loosely at her sides; he doesn’t mistake that for relaxation, though—he knows just from watching her at Dantius Towers that she’s always tense, ready for a fight to break out at any moment. “Unless you think you’re not up for it.”

There’s a tilt to the corner of her lips—a challenge, then, one that he doesn’t want to back down from despite a part of him insisting that it would make more sense for her to leave him behind. “I am sure it would pose no challenge,” he says, and the grin widens the slightest bit. “This is immediate, then?”

Shepard nods, already turning back towards the entrance. “We’re less than an hour away. Be at the cargo bay as soon as you’re ready—but stop by the lab first. Mordin’s come up with a way to keep the Seeker swarms off us, and you’ll need it before we leave.” She doesn’t wait for a response, but she does pause at the door, one hand resting on the frame. “You should know I don’t tolerate insubordination on my ship.”

“Noted.” He can see the side of her face when she leaves, can see her mouth turned up in a smile. He’s surprised, in a way, at the ease with which she talks to him, since they’ve known each other for less than two days. It’s hard to reconcile this image of Commander Shepard with the one the public speaks about—ruthless, unfeeling. Of course, she would act differently around her crew, though he hadn’t expected to be counted among that number so quickly. If they’re going to be watching each others’ backs sooner rather than later, perhaps it’s best for them to be acquainted.

She’s in the lab when he shows up, armored with her hair fully back, and Mordin is inserting the needle of a syringe into her neck. She winces for a second, a barely noticeable movement, and then it’s over, the needle withdrawn, and she’s standing and heading towards the elevator, her shoulder brushing his. “Cargo bay,” she says without looking at him, and leaves.

~

Horizon is everything and nothing like what he expects. Whatever Mordin injected them with seems to work, for the most part, and they’re not bothered by the Seeker swarms as much as they are by the Collectors themselves, but even they don’t feel like much of a threat. Shepard is as good a sniper as everyone says and then some, and she’s able to switch between far- and close-range combat with surprising ease. Even the frozen colonists don’t seem to shake her; she only presses her lips together and orders them to move forward. When they reach the center of the colony, she hacks a set of large doors to open them, and he sees, behind the center tower, the slightest bit of movement.

He grabs Shepard’s arm and pulls her back, and when she turns her gaze to him, brow raised and fury written clear on her face—he’s doing the thing that, barely two hours ago, she’d told him not to do—he points at the place where he saw the flicker. She raises her scope to her face, and a moment later a shot rings out, and the body of a husk falls to the ground.

“Nice catch,” she says to him, and on her other side, Garrus nods. It’s a blur of fighting after that, wave after wave of husks, and Collectors, and after that, some hideous flying thing—he can tell by the way that Shepard’s eyes widen for a moment before she raises her gun that she hasn’t seen anything like it either. Still, it goes down after a few minutes of hard fighting, of her shouting through the comms and annoyed noises when it regenerates its shields. The satisfaction of finally defeating the damned thing, of watching the Collector ship take off and leave Horizon behind, is short-lived, though; the mechanic who had refused to help them earlier seems to think Shepard, particularly, didn’t do enough to rescue the colonists that were already on board.

“If it wasn’t for Shepard, you’d all be onboard that thing,” Garrus snaps, and Thane wonders if the human man picks up on the irritation transmitted loud and clear through his subharmonics. Shepard certainly does, if the glance she throws his way is any indication—that, or she’s just spent enough time around him to figure out his moods. This is the first time he’s seen them together, though he’d briefly introduced himself to Garrus when they ran across each other in the mess, and he’s impressed by how well they fight together, like they’re reading each other’s minds.

“Shepard? Wait, I know that name.” The man’s brow furrows, and Thane can see her tense up. “Yeah, I remember you—you’re some type of big Alliance hero.”

“Commander Shepard,” comes a voice from behind a stack of crates, and as an unfamiliar man comes into view she flinches, just enough to be visible to him. A glance at Garrus shows he’s just as surprised. “Captain of the Normandy. The first human Spectre. Savior of the Citadel. You’re in the presence of a legend, Delan. And a ghost.”

The mechanic scoffs, watches as the man stops a few feet away from them. “All the good people we lost, and you get left behind. Figures.” His gaze darts back and forth between the man and Shepard, and he shakes his head. “Screw this. I’m done with you Alliance types.”

Shepard waits until he’s gone to step forward, approaching the remaining stranger without fear. “Kaidan,” she says, and Thane is surprised by the tone of her voice—there’s a kind of affection there he hasn’t heard before, though it’s somewhat buried beneath her businesslike demeanor. “Got any more titles you want to throw out there?”

There’s a second where they hesitate, only a few inches away from each other, and then the man wraps his arms around her, and Shepard responds in kind; her grasp is looser, more hesitant, and when they part she is the first to move back.

“I thought you were dead, Shepard,” he—Kaidan—says. The name is familiar enough, Shepard had mentioned on the way down in the shuttle that a man named Kaidan would be there, but beyond that he’s not sure what their relation is. He had meant to put out feelers in his network, see what he could find out about Shepard that isn’t on the more official channels of information, but the mission came up so quickly that he’s yet to do so.

Her head turns to the side for a second, to look at Garrus, and then over at Thane. She’s tense; he tenses in response. “A reunion will have to wait. Cerberus brought me back to stop attacks like this. Clearly we arrived too late for this one—”

“You’re with Cerberus now?”

The question hangs in the air around them. Even if he were without his vast amount of contacts, Thane would know Cerberus by reputation—most of the non-human races did, and none for good reason. It seems as though their image among humans isn’t pristine, either, if the amount of betrayal in Kaidan’s voice is anything to go by. “Garrus, too?” His eyes leave Shepard for the first time, and they all follow his gaze. “I can’t believe the reports were right.”

“Reports?” Garrus asks. “You mean you already knew?”

Kaidan seems torn, hovering somewhere between apologetic and angry as he speaks. He doesn’t acknowledge Thane at all; his focus is solely on Shepard and Garrus, which suits Thane just fine. “Alliance intel thought Cerberus might be behind the missing human colonies. They got a tip this colony might be the next one to get hit.” With every word he speaks, Shepard somehow manages to tense up even further. She’s gripping her pistol so tightly that, if Garrus’ joke about Cerberus enhancing her strength is true, Thane’s surprised it hasn’t dented yet, or broken outright. “Anderson stonewalled me, but there were rumors that you weren’t dead. That you were working for the enemy.”

_The enemy._ Such a blanket statement for such a complicated situation. When Shepard replies, her frustration is evident. “Right now, Cerberus and I want the same thing—to save our colonies. That doesn’t mean I answer to them.”

“Do you believe that? Or is that just what Cerberus wants you to think?” Kaidan sighs. His hand twitches at his side, like he wants to reach for her, but stops himself. The movement is minute, but Shepard’s head tilts just a little—she sees it too. His voice changes, becomes tinged with regret. “I wanted to believe the rumors that you were alive, but I never expected anything like this. You turned your back on everything you believed in. You betrayed the Alliance—you betrayed _me_.”

On Thane’s right, Garrus is making a low rumbling sound that means _anger_ , one that’s likely inaudible to human ears, except, perhaps, for Shepard’s. “The past is done,” she snaps, and It’s clear she’s only just keeping a handle on her anger; the scars on her cheek pulse brighter for a moment. The outline of their relationship is beginning to solidify to Thane, and it explains—too much. “We need to focus on what’s happening now. You saw it yourself. The Collectors are targeting human colonies, and they’re working with the Reapers.”

Kaidan sighs, runs an armored hand through his hair. “I want to believe you, Celia,” he says, earning a scoff from Shepard, and intensified growling from Garrus, though neither of them interrupt. “But I don’t trust Cerberus. They could be using the threat of a Reaper to manipulate you. What if they’re behind it? What if they’re working with the Collectors?”

“Damn it, Kaidan!” Garrus exclaims. Shepard turns to look at him, stepping back so the three of them are standing next to each other, conveniently putting more space between her and Kaidan. “You’re so focused on Cerberus that you’re ignoring the real threat!”

He doesn’t respond right away. Shepard and Garrus look at each other a second longer, and then she turns to Thane. Her gaze locks with his, then slides in the direction of where the shuttle will land, and he inclines his head in the smallest of nods. “I can see you won’t listen to reason,” she says to Kaidan. “In that case, we’ll be going.”

“You show up after two years and tell me you’re working with Cerberus. Where does reason figure into any of this?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to know. It’s not like you’ve ever been reasonable about us, anyway.”

Silence follows, so thick even the sharpest knife wouldn’t make a dent in it. The words are bait, Thane can tell—dropped to see if Kaidan will go for it, but he doesn’t. “You’ve changed. But I still know where my loyalties lie. I’m an Alliance soldier. Always will be.” He shakes his head, turns to leave. “I’ve got to report back to the Citadel. They can decide if they believe your story or not.”

“We both know how that’s gonna turn out. The Alliance will try to blame Cerberus, just like you did.”

The accusation makes Kaidan pause. “A leopard can’t change its spots. Cerberus can’t be trusted.”

“And what about me?”

He doesn’t turn around, but Thane watches as his shoulders slump, his posture losing some of the rigidity that had been present ever since Cerberus was mentioned. “Goodbye, Shepard. And be careful.”

The three of them are left standing after Kaidan disappears from their line of sight, Thane and Garrus glancing at each other, then at Shepard, but her eyes are still fixed on the spot where she saw him last. She looks—not upset, not quite, though her painted lips are pressed together tightly, but—longing, almost. Like she had wanted him to believe her, more so than the others. He can only speak for what he’s seen, and his one-on-one interactions with Shepard are admittedly few, but once he’d agreed to come with her there hadn’t been much more conversation. Even now, he only knows the bare minimum of their mission’s details; the briefing had been put off upon hearing of Horizon. Frustration at the loss of a potential ally is understandable, but this is far beyond anything he would have anticipated.

“The ‘what about me?’ bit was a nice touch,” Garrus says, his tone at odds with the way he still holds his gun loosely, ready at any moment for the possibility that he’ll have to use it. “Shame it didn’t actually work on him. Don’t really know why you would have expected it to.”

“It worked on _you_.” She doesn’t smile, but the tense set of her mouth eases a bit, and she lifts her omnitool to her arm to request the shuttle for pickup. As they’re making their way towards the agreed-upon spot, she lets Garrus get a few paces ahead of them, and drops back to walk by Thane.

“No lasting damage,” he says before she can ask, and she grins a little, though the set of her face is still somber.

“And no lingering doubts?”

He pauses, puts a hand on her arm when she keeps walking, and she flinches, more noticeably than before. She’s composed herself again in seconds, but he can’t help but wonder how many people are even willing to touch her so casually. It’s not even that she’s been dead for two years—she holds herself at such a distance, evident even from the way she’d directed her squad at Dantius. “Not about the mission.”

She nods, not quite meeting his eye as she starts once again towards where the shuttle is landing. “Good,” she says. “I can come by Life Support later, if you want a more in-depth debrief. Since you haven’t been here that long.”

It would sound flirtatious, coming from anyone else, but she is so matter-of-fact about the whole thing that it’s impossible to interpret it as such. “Only if you think it necessary.”

The shuttle ride back is silent, but as they’re exiting in the cargo bay, Garrus speaks up again. “Don’t let him get to you, Shepard. Anyone who isn’t willing to believe you after what happened with Sovereign isn’t worth your time.”

That does pull a real smile out of her, though it’s a small one. She pulls her visor off, lets it hang loosely from her fingers as she closes the locker where she keeps her guns. “Thanks, Garrus.” A pause, then she turns to Thane. “And thank you. For coming along at the last minute.”

He inclines his head, choosing not to respond aloud in favor of safely storing his own equipment, but he thinks he sees the grin widen, and that’s enough.

~

Shepard doesn’t come down to Life Support, and on some level, he’s not surprised. From what he’s been able to pick up listening to crew chatter, during the few minutes he spent in the mess, she didn’t leave the CIC for nearly an hour after their return, and went straight from there up to her cabin, where she’s remained since. Trying to speak to her there feels like crossing a line, so he remains in his makeshift quarters, cleaning and arranging the weapons he’s decided to keep there instead of down in the cargo bay, until late in the Normandy’s night cycle, when he assumes the common areas will be empty. It’s then that he leaves to get himself some food, and perhaps tea while he’s there.

It’s no secret that most of the crew don’t want him on board, or at the very least are wary of him. He doesn’t blame them, nor does it particularly bother him; this has been the case most of his life, and his profession precludes the development of most truly meaningful relationships, outside of—well. The trip to the mess is as much a distraction as it is a necessity, as was the time he spent cleaning and organizing his weapons before that. The more physically active he is, the easier he avoids slipping into solipsism, and being lost in memory is a distraction he cannot afford, not in an environment still so unfamiliar to him.

When he rounds the corner into the mess, though, he finds he’s not the only one there, despite the late hour. Shepard is standing behind the counter, standing on her toes to pull something down from one of the higher cabinet shelves. She looks smaller without the armor, dressed only in a cropped tank top and sweatpants; her hair, unbound, falls to the small of her back, lighter towards the ends than at the crown of her head. Thane pauses by one of the long tables, watching but not interrupting, wondering if he should leave altogether and come back when she’s more likely to be gone. Before he can come to a decision, though, she turns around.

She spots him immediately, but there’s none of the hesitance he’s seen from other members of the crew; she just nods and sets the object she’d been grabbing for—a tin of ground coffee—on the counter. “Thane.”

“Celia.” The name, he thinks, is at odds with her. Such _soft_ sounds for someone as cold as she makes herself appear. Even now, when nobody else is roaming the ship’s halls save the two of them, she is put-together; a full face of makeup, opaque lipstick, a glossy coat of dark color on her nails where they click against the countertop as she drums her fingers. There are bruises scattered across her arms, though, a few on her stomach where it’s visible between the bottom of the shirt and her waistband. If they’re from the fighting on Horizon, he thinks, they’ve already faded far beyond what he would anticipate.

Shepard raises one dark brow, but the tilt of her lips tells him she’s not actually offended. “Awfully familiar of you,” she says, tone neutral as she pulls the lid off the tin and turns around to the coffee maker behind her. Assured that his presence is not unwelcome, he approaches, stopping on the other side of the counter and resting his hands on its surface. It’s silent as she scoops the grounds and starts the machine, puts the tin away, but it’s different from the tense quiet of Horizon—not comfortable, but not awkward, either. She opens another cabinet and pulls out a mug so large that both her hands can’t wrap around it, setting it next to the coffee maker before she mimics his posture, her fingers resting only a foot or so away from his.

“You did well today,” she says, and he tears his gaze away from her hands to meet her eyes. They’re brown, ostensibly, but when she tilts her head there’s the barest flash of red in her irises, similar to the scars that crisscross her face—and the rest of her body, he now knows as he takes note of a particularly large on that curls around her left hip. His glance moves up again quickly after that, but the damage is done; her lips pull thin for a moment when he looks back at her. “Not that I was particularly worried. I’m only interested in recruiting professionals.” The coffee maker beeps, and she turns to pull the pot from the heat. “Still, you work well with us—I assume you’re used to working alone.”

It’s not a question, not quite, but he can hear the note of interest in her voice. “Often, but not always,” he says as he watches her pour the contents of the pot into the mug. “Certain contracts necessitate working with others, just as this mission does.” She nods, but doesn’t look at him; she’s busy stirring milk and sugar into the coffee, and the gentle clicking of the spoon on the edges of the mug is the only thing to break the silence that falls once again between them. Strands of her hair fall in front of her face, pool on the counter, and he’s struck with the sudden desire to push it back behind her ear, to see if it’s as soft as it looks. The very idea startles him enough that his own grip on the edge of the counter tightens for a moment. It’s not the kind of thought he should be having about this woman who is, for all intents and purposes, his superior, and a thought he doesn’t want to have, besides. His time for things like that has long since gone. Still, he can’t help but admit to himself that she is—fascinating.

He knows he should get what he came to the mess for and retreat back to Life Support. He’s no good at small talk, not outside of what’s required for his work, and the conversation seems to be rapidly heading that way. She surprises him again, though, when, after putting the spoon in the sink, she picks up the mug with one hand and gestures for him to follow with the other. He trails her down the hallway in the opposite direction of Life Support and into the starboard observation deck, a room that had been locked until now. The entire wall opposite them is glass, the join between the panes so nearly seamless that it feels as though he could reach out and touch the nearby stars. The room is empty aside from a few benches, but Shepard ignores them in favor of sitting cross-legged on the floor instead. She places the mug in front of her and motions for Thane to sit beside her.

He keeps some distance between them as he mimics her posture, watches her stare out the window with her hands resting loosely in her lap. He’s expecting the debriefing she offered earlier; despite their current position, he finds it difficult to imagine anything less than formal coming out of her lips, not when this working relationship is so new—but she’s full of unexpected words today, it seems.

“Kaidan Alenko was a crew member on the original Normandy,” she says, eyes still on the window. The low light glints off the sheen of her lips as she speaks. “Part of the team I took with me when I went after Saren.”

Thane holds a hand up before she can say anything else, and her gaze is curious when she glances over. “You do not need to tell me any of this, if you’d prefer not to.”

“I know. I’m choosing to.”

She doesn’t sound annoyed, or upset, but the words are enough to give him pause, and he nods at her to continue. It isn’t where he thought the conversation would go, but he’s not complaining; if she’s willing to divulge, it would be in his best interest to know as much as possible about the woman running the ship that he’ll be spending most of his time on now. “I didn’t originally choose him; I was the Normandy’s XO before Eden Prime—didn’t take over until after that. The original captain chose the crew, and a few of them stayed on after the transfer, Kaidan included.”

She speaks so matter-of-factly that it’s difficult to reconcile her as she is now with the woman he’d seen on Horizon, the one who had—perhaps against her wishes—let her emotions get the better of her, if only for a moment. In the quiet that follows, she picks up the mug again, sighs, brings it to her lips. “We had a few run-ins with Cerberus during the chase. They were experimenting with rachni on Noveria, and by the time we got there the rachni had overrun the whole lab, not to mention the places on other planets they’d gotten loose. And there was a settlement—Cerberus turned them all into husks. It would probably be quicker to list the things we saw that _didn’t_ involve them somehow.”

Shepard hums, a little substitute for a laugh. “But the worst of it…I was helping someone look for some missing soldiers. We went to the place they were last seen, responding to a distress beacon, but it was a fake. They were lured right into a thresher maw nest, and Cerberus set the trap.” Her jaw clenches, her fingers tighten around the ceramic. Thane feels a little sick as he listens to her detail the horrors she’d encountered. He’s always known Cerberus isn’t exactly fond of other races, but to do this to their own people—it goes against everything he thought they stood for. “We were looking into it, and so was the Admiral I was helping. And it killed him. We found him dead in one of their bases.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, more out of instinct than anything else, and he regrets it—how many times had people said the same thing to him, after Irikah passed? How many of them had meant it as more than just an empty platitude? The pain of her death is still as fresh as the day it happened, when he chooses to think on it, and to react to Shepard’s story in such a way…

It doesn’t seem to have bothered her, though the smile she gives him is small and strained. “It’s—I didn’t really know him outside of that. But his life didn’t matter to Cerberus. Neither did the lives of the soldiers and colonists they killed.” She presses her lips together, almost like she’s going to pull the bottom one between her teeth, and then stops, reverses the motion. “I don’t know that they care much about the people in these colonies, either. The emphasis is always on the Collectors.”

Her eyes dart around the room at rapid speed for a few seconds, and Thane follows her gaze. It’s a given that the room is monitored—he doubts there’s an area on the ship that isn’t—but the question, then, is how much is being reported back to Cerberus. It seems unlikely they would be interested in the minutiae of the ship’s functions, but when it comes to Shepard herself, they might be paying closer attention. “Anyway,” she says, “that’s why Kaidan reacted so badly when I brought up Cerberus. I don’t blame him. If I were in his place, I would’ve done the same damn thing.”

She raises the mug for another drink, and he takes the opportunity to study her; it’s plain to see that what she’s told him isn’t all there is to it, and it shows in the tense set of her shoulders, the way she sits with her spine straight and head facing forward, anything but relaxed. “Might I ask you something, Shepard?”

There’s a quiet clink as the mug meets the tile floor. “You can ask. No guarantee I’ll answer.”

“He used your first name.”

It surprises her enough that she turns her head to look at him, and he meets her gaze steadily. Bold, he knows, for the amount of time he’s known her. “That’s not a question,” she remarks; the corner of her mouth tilts upward. “But if you’re asking what our relationship was…” She does bite her lip this time, though when the flesh slips out from between her teeth her lipstick is somehow undisturbed. “I’ll just say the Alliance wouldn’t have approved of it.”

“Ah.” He doesn’t press further; he’s already pushed his luck enough for one night, but already there are pieces of her falling into place, things the reports would leave out, if he were to ever look at them. There’s a person underneath the mythical figure of Commander Shepard, and she’s—well. He’s not sure what to think of her yet, but the decision to join her crew is feeling more and more like the right one. “I fear I’ve taken up enough of your time,” he says, moving to stand.

She nods, somewhat absentmindedly, before she seems to realize what he’s saying, and rises with him, mug in hand. “We’re en route to Illium again,” she says. “Horizon interrupted recruiting, but there’s someone else there we’re hoping to get on the ship. If you have any unfinished business there, you’ll have a chance to get it done.”

He doesn’t have any unfinished business on Illium—doesn’t have much at all, for that matter—but he inclines his head in acknowledgement and thanks, and heads towards the door. It isn’t until it’s sliding open in front of him that he stops to look back and finds her with her head tilted downwards, a hand pressed against her forehead. Going back to her would be crossing a line, and the few feet between them feel unbreachable now, so he leaves before she can realize he’s hesitated at all, and the memory of her lingers at the front of his mind for the rest of the night.

**Author's Note:**

> ok listen i know that in 'no sound but the wind' he didn't know her first name and here they are saying it but we're gonna ignore that (once everything in this series is done i'm going to go back and edit for style/continuity anyway but until then just Pretend You Do Not See It)
> 
> anyway. love the idea of 'this relationship leans romantic from very early on except they're both too stupid and/or stubborn to acknowledge it.' it shows up in basically every ship i write and this one is no exception lmao


End file.
